Our state made one of those lists I’d rather not be on: North Carolina is one of several where patients have contracted a rare kind of fungal meningitis caused by a drug used to treat back pain.

Nationwide, the outbreak has been deadly, killing seven and sickening 30 more. Surgery centers in High Point and Wilson, where patients have been treated with the drug, have put out alerts.

So far, the state has no reported deaths.

The bad drug is a steroid — methylprednisolone acetate — made by New EnglandCompoundingCenter, located in Framingham, Mass. The disease is not contagious, so you won’t have a problem if you did not get injected with the specific steroid involved. If you have any concern at all, you can check the Food and Drug Administration’s list of the recalled drugs connected to the steroid and the outbreak.

I don’t know much about meningitis, beyond what I’ve read, but a friend of mine does.

She had a form of it back in 1991, when she was living in New England.

This is how she described it: “A pounding in your head as if it’s going to blow off your body.”

I gather it was one of the worst pains she’s had. It was accompanied by dry heaves that came on “after I had thrown up everything in my body,” she remembers.

Yikes.

She was initially misdiagnosed with the flu.

Her boyfriend at the time was a musician who had a gig that night. He checked to see if she’d be OK if he went ahead and went out, and for some reason, she said yes. (She was young.)

Fortunately for her, the young man’s father came over and found her looking so poorly he insisted she go to the hospital, where she was properly diagnosed after a spinal tap.

They gave her some medicine, and the pain disappeared in a euphoric moment she says felt like nothing she’d ever felt except when she was given Valium after surgery to remove her wisdom teeth.

I like to hear people’s medical stories, when they end well.

My friend is not sure hers would have. She feels she might have checked out if her boyfriend’s dad had not come by.

Many of the victims in the national outbreak have been seniors who received spinal injections for lower-back pain. Infected patients are treated with anti-fungal medication by IV.

I was most surprised to learn that companies can make a variety of drugs like this steroid with no FDA oversight.

The FDA is now working with New EnglandCompoundingCenter, which has ceased manufacturing, on getting information about its drugs. This seems like the reverse order to me — like closing the barn door after the horses are out.

But I’ll leave that kind of judgment to the medical professionals.

Columnist Myron B. Pitts can be reached at pittsm@fayobserver.com.

Recalled drugs

For a list of the recalled drugs linked to the meningitis outbreak, visit www.fda.gov/Drugs/DrugSafety/ ucm322752.htm.